Risk Distribution Law For Evolution

I've been saying for a long time that a bombardment of cosmic rays would cause high rates of mutations in humans, but our bodies are capable of repairing DNA damage, and can choose which damage to leave unfixed. That's correct - choose.

Now supporting evidence has arrived:

Barkai and her team discovered a sort of "risk distribution law" for evolution. They found that a genetic "phrase" that regularly shows up in the promoter region of genes (the bit of genetic code responsible for activating the gene) contains a key to gene conservation: The expression of a gene that contains the sequence TATA in its promoter is more likely to have evolved than that of a gene that does not have TATA in its promoter.

In other words, the level of risk appears to written in the gene code, in a way that's similar to financial risk analysis: When the cost of error is high, an investor's willingness to chance the risk is low, but if the cost of a mistake is negligible, even if the chance of making one is high, the possibility of gain may make the risk worthwhile. Evolution, it seems, discovered this principle millions of years before Wall Street. (more here)

Example:

Perhaps we could afford to mess with the size of our ears, but we would rather not take any risks with our eyes.

A gene associated with the size of ears might have the sequence TATA, so when mutated, the DNA is not repaired, and new sizes of ears develop. But a gene associated with the eye might not have the sequence TATA, so our body repairs any damage to it.

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This means that many humans can mutate in similar ways - and this gives us the potential to mutate into a new human species, via cosmic ray bombardment